


paradoxical recollection

by babybel



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Audio: The Last, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but he seems not to have told c'rizz SO, set between caerdroia and the next life, so it's canon that the doctor told charley about her death in the last, yes c'rizz and charley are from different universes yes they're still siblings. they exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22216102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel
Summary: Sometimes, the nightmare wasn’t a dream but instead a memory, pulled up for viewing another time. What was still keeping him locked in that post-nightmare panic, even whole minutes after waking up, was the fact that it had been the second kind. He had an actual memory of seeing Charley dead.-once they're back safe in the tardis after caerdroia, c'rizz starts remembering the cycle from the last
Relationships: C'rizz & Charley Pollard
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	paradoxical recollection

**Author's Note:**

> the last literally took me the hell out.. no i'm not done all the audios yes i'm still writing about them we exist.. anyway charley and c'rizz literally kill me they care about each other so much :'/

C’rizz was never able to sleep through the night. Waking up panicked or nauseous or crying from a nightmare was familiar to the point where he actually wasn’t sure what he’d do if he slept a full night. So the fact that he woke up, heart pounding, chest still aching with grief, wasn’t the odd part. The odd part was the fact that he’d never had this nightmare before. 

Usually, his nightmares were the same. He cycled through them. This face that had begged him for mercy. That person’s last words. All of them, gathered around him, maybe asking him why. L’da. 

He’d never dreamed of Charley before, and especially never like this. 

The dream was fading fast, and he struggled to hold onto it, to remember that image that had stopped his heart so. She was lying in bed. In what could pass for a hospital bed, maybe. Her face was still slightly red, her skin still slightly warm, but she was dead. 

He could still taste the words he’d screamed in his mouth: _someone murdered her. If I’d have stayed with her this wouldn’t have happened_. 

He took a few deep breaths, trying to work through it. He’d been pushing through nightmares all his life; he could just do the same with this. Shove it deep down in his head and still smile in the morning for the Doctor and Charley, but Charley-

His chest seized. Charley was dead. For all the nightmares he’d had, he couldn’t name one that had filled him so horribly with the sense that he’d let his family slip away between his fingers. 

And another thing, he realized, as he was becoming more conscious. Years of guilt and self loathing over what he’d done had taught him a very important distinction when it came to nightmares: there were two kinds, and it was important to know which one you were having. The first kind was more common. A fictional story or image, drawing on real things but never having actually happened. The second kind was exponentially worse, and it was when the nightmare wasn’t a dream but instead a memory, pulled up for viewing another time. What was still keeping him locked in that post-nightmare panic, even whole minutes after waking up, was the fact that it had been the second kind. He had an actual memory of seeing Charley dead. 

With another jolt of fear, he realized he’d never seen Charley’s bed in the TARDIS. She’d invited him to her room several times, but he’d always declined as politely as he could; he hadn’t done enough to be worthy of seeing something that personal yet, he wasn’t good enough for her, and he didn’t want to trick her into thinking he was. But that meant it could be her bed, and it could be tonight, because she was fine when he last saw her. 

How he’d have seen her he didn’t know - maybe sleepwalking? - but he was seized with a need to see her. If he ran, maybe he could save her, maybe there was still time, maybe he could get to her before she-

He got out of bed and ran from his room, knowing full well he wasn’t thinking rationally at all. It didn’t make sense, none of it made sense. The ship’s corridors all looked the same in the dark, and he was terrified he’d get lost and not get to her in time. He knew the door to her room and what it looked like. He could visualize it. 

It seemed that the ship was helping him, making the path from him to Charley as straight and short as possible. He was there nearly immediately.

He stopped at the door, heart pounding in his eardrums. It felt wrong to come into her room without being invited, without even asking, but the horror of that image, of her lying there dead, overruled that, and he pushed the door open and went to her bed. 

It wasn’t the bed in the dream. It looked nothing like that, it wasn’t even close. 

He breathed a sigh of relief, wiping his shaking hands on his pants. He tried to make her out in the dark, and when he couldn’t see well enough to tell if she was breathing or not, he put a hand on her shoulder to see if he could feel it. 

She was breathing, and what’s more, when he touched a hand to her she rolled over, making a little disgruntled noise. 

“Charlotte?” He said it quietly, and found upon trying to speak that he was near tears. “I didn’t mean to wake you, if- if you’re awake now. I just…” He couldn’t find an apt excuse, and realized how strange it was. He had a memory of something that never happened. 

After a second, Charley, voice still slurred with sleep, replied, “C’rizz?” She sounded disbelieving. “What’s going on?” She pushed herself up in bed, and tucked her hair behind her ears to get it out of her eyes. She was blinking, trying to make her eyes adjust to the dark quickly. “Is everything alright?”

“I-” He stopped. “I’m not sure.” 

“Do you need help?” She sounded like she was scared, but keeping up the brave face she always kept. 

He felt horrible for waking her, and even worse for worrying her. He could remember being in an enclosed space, in a chair, with two other people. _She killed Charlotte, I know she did._ He swallowed. 

“C’rizz, come here,” Charley said, and there was such a comforting warmth to her words.

“But- I-” He was already just about as close to the bed as he could get.

Charley took his arm and gently pulled him closer.

He went with her, and in a moment he was kneeling next to her on her bed. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked again, and reached over to flick on the lamp that sat on her bedside table. A dim, warm glow filled the room. “Did you have a nightmare?”

C’rizz couldn’t breathe. He was overwhelmed with the thought that he couldn’t let her know anything was wrong, knowing that if he admitted to it, he’d have to admit to everything, and then she’d never want to look at him again. He was perhaps more overwhelmed, though, by the idea of being able to say that he wanted help. He didn’t need it; he was perfectly capable of pushing on and pushing through like he always, always did, keeping things silent and secret. But he yearned for it, he yearned to allow himself vulnerability.

His self control had never been anywhere near perfect. He didn’t have a handle on himself, and he gave a nod of his head. 

“Oh,” Charley sighed, and she took him by the shoulders and pulled him into a hug. 

He gritted his teeth and buried his face in the crook of her neck, holding tight to handfuls of her nightgown. She was breathing, he assured himself. When he thought he could trust himself to speak and not fall apart like a child, he said, “I dreamed- Charlotte- I know that it happened.” 

“That what happened?” she asked gently, rubbing his back. 

“You died.” He said it, and her hand stilled on his shoulder. “You were dead. I found your body lying in a bed. You’d just been killed-”

“Stop it,” she said, voice breaking like it did when she was upset. “C’rizz, that’s awful, I-”

“I could’ve kept you safe,” he pressed on, lifting his head. “If I’d just stayed with you I could’ve kept you safe but I- I left, because Requiem-” He stopped, adding this new piece to the puzzle. He couldn’t remember most of it, but Requiem was something. Someone, who’d gotten him to leave Charley’s bed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to put it all together and make sense of it. He should be able to remember. “Requiem wanted to talk, so I left,” he finished quietly. “I know it happened. Charlotte- how are you alive?”

Charley swallowed. She didn’t look nearly as horrified as she should. In fact, if anything, she looked guilty. “It did happen,” she whispered after a beat. “I don’t remember either, but- the Doctor told me. There was a sort of a- a cycle thing, I think, that reset, and the Doctor’s the only one who can remember what happened before it did. Do you remember the victory parade?”

“The Doctor made us leave before we could hear the speech,” C’rizz recalled, not knowing what to think. 

“It happened right before that. I did die,” she said softly. “That’s what he told me. I’m- sorry you remembered.” 

“Why didn’t he tell me anything?” C’rizz asked, not knowing whether he should be angry at being kept in the dark, sickened by the fact that Charley really had died, or relieved that she was alive now. 

“I don’t know,” she answered, and if she was lying at least she was a good liar. 

Before he could think too much on it though, it hit him properly that Charley had actually died, that she’d been murdered, and it had been his fault. “I’m so sorry,” he said, and this catharsis or whatever it was was happening too quickly, too messily. “Charlotte, I’m so, so sorry I didn’t save you. I should have stayed with you, I should have never left-”

“C’rizz, C’rizz,” Charley shushed him. “Look at me. I’m fine.” 

C’rizz took a breath, and put himself back into his body, trying to grab for his version of grounded. He was shaking. “But-”

“C’rizz, I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen. Really, listen,” Charley said, brow furrowing just a touch. “It’s okay.”

C’rizz looked at her, eyes wide, feeling for all the world like an animal she was trying to tame. The words washed over him, slow, gentle, like a lazy wave on sun-warmed sand. It felt like she was forgiving him for everything, for all of it, even the sins she didn’t know about. A sob caught in his throat.

“Honestly,” she continued, and now she was smiling so intently he could hear it in her voice. She touched a hand to his shoulder. “It’s okay, and it’s going to be okay as well.” 

He cleared his throat, and realized he was holding tightly onto her blanket. He made himself let go, folding his hands in his lap. That felt too much like prayer, though, and so he just let them lay by his sides. “Thank you,” he said, looking down. “Charlotte, I- would die before I let that happen to you again.”

Charley’s smile was fading, and she was looking right at him with a lack of shame that was inconceivable to him. Softly, she said, “I love you too, C’rizz.” 

He made himself meet her eyes, and it wasn’t the punishment he’d expected it to be. It was reassuring. Healing, that was it. Healing. He couldn’t speak; he couldn’t find words. 

“You can stay here, if you want,” she offered. Then, with a chuckle, she added, “I’ve heard I’m quite good at staving off nightmares.”

“No, I couldn’t- I’m going back to my room,” C’rizz said quickly. He’d already overstepped his boundaries enough for one night. 

“Are you sure? I don’t mind.”

He knew she wasn’t trying to trick him, that she would never try to trick him, but he still had to remind himself that this wasn’t some kind of trap, and that she was just being kind. He wasn’t conditioned to trust kindness. “I’m sure,” he said, and hoped he sounded gentle. “Thank you.” 

“Of course,” Charley replied, watching him as he stood back up and moved to the door. “Sleep well, C’rizz.” 

He nodded. He was standing by that hospital bed again for a moment, the Doctor urging him to leave. They weren’t bringing her with them. _Goodbye, Charlotte. Goodbye Charley._ “Goodnight, Charlotte,” he said, pulling himself out of the memory. She wasn’t dead; she was safe right in front of him. Before closing her door, he amended, “Goodnight, Charley.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @lesbiandonnanoble :^)


End file.
